AmiPro was better than Word. Wordperfect was best for experienced clerical staff and task Automation (macro programming).
I agree, the reason that MS won was the Microsoft Office Pro Package which bundled Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Viso, and Project. Once MS crushed the competition products began to slowly become "sold separately" as we see today with Viso and Project. I think a recent strategical error of Microsoft's was not releasing a version of Office for iOS, but it looks like they will try to play catch-up in 2014 with an iPad release. I truly believe that Balmer thought the iPad would fail to gain marketshare and mocked it.
Microsoft is in no immediate danger, but in my opinion they are overplaying their hand by trying too squeeze to tight. They need to adopt the Amazon model of giving more than the customer expects. Instead of charge more than the customer expects as in the case of their new licensing model.
Apple has also made a few blunders, the iPad is not a full laptop replacement (to protect the Air) and their cloud services are a disaster. If Apple gave the iPad the ability to replace a desktop and shored up the cloud backend, it could almost be checkmate. Meanwhile, Chrome books are gaining market share while both companies calculate their next moves.
It will be interesting to see this play out and I am particularly interested in the next XBOX and the "always on" Internet requirement.
Reason Number Two... Ease of Use for Video Editing
on
Why PC Sales Are Declining
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I know there is a lot of speculation into the PC Sales dip, but let's face it, it is the same old song and dance in PC land. If I buy a new PC it has Windows 8 it comes loaded with crapware and doesn't do very much of what most people want to do. Tonight I went to Staples to browse and most of the Windows 8 machines were stuck on "Your protection expired XX days ago. Would you like to purchase Norton." AND I STILL CAN'T CREATE AND EDIT A VIDEO OUT OF THE BOX. However MS-Paint, Calculator, and Notepad are still hanging in from 1987, but to be fair, MS-Paint did get a facelift.
Flash forward to the iPad. I can give grandma an iPad with iMovie within 15 minutes she has first amazing video trailer of the grandkids on YouTube. Yes, I know the PC has robust suites like Adobe, Roxio, and Vegas but they aren't simple. Grandma has to figure out the Camera, take the SDHC card out, import the video, setup a project (hmm.... does grandma want DV-NTSC Standard-48Khz or DV-NTSC-Widescreen-48Khz, or maybe AVCHD-1080i(50i) Anamorphic) , import the video segments into timelines and on and on until she gives up. It is far too painful, just opening the door to the SDHC card can be a 15 minute project.
The problem with the PC is it hasn't gotten simpler. It hasn't gotten less painful to use, and grandma still can't get her video onto YouTube. One a daily basis on I use Linux, Windows 7, iPad, and MacOS/X. To me they have just become tools to get different jobs done. The clear winner for ease of use, efficiency, and convenience is the iPad tablet where I can get my video onto YouTube without crapware popping up telling me I need to update or am unprotected.
Oh and one more reason. SSDs. I can put an SSD in an old box, and suddenly, it becomes a vibrant fast box, even with all the crapware.
And MS, if you are listening. Put some useful WOW factor, polished software into your OS. Make the consumer feel like they really got something high value for their dollar or just keep doing what your doing. And if you keep on the same path, make sure you knee-cap the next XBOX with always on Internet required for play. Also, if you decided to launch a phone, make sure you abandon all your early adopters and ensure that the phone has no polished apps. Does anyone at MS still know how to code beyond rearranging the UI? Just asking.
Until we as a people decide that our national security depends on our manufacturing base and manufacturing capability then what difference does it make? It's all coming from China no matter how you look at it. The subcontractor of my subcontractor of my subcontractor is Chairman Mao. And when you play in a commodity market, the lowest bidding supplier with a stolen formula for capacitors wins as in the case of Dell.
Really? I have to tell you I am totally ignorant of the Book of Mormon, but I don't think that genetically engineering high IQ children to fight an Alien Assimilation of earth is in there, maybe I am wrong, but I am going to go with the wikipedia [[ citation needed ]] on your post. Perhaps you could share a few parallels and educate us all. It has been awhile since I read the book, but I didn't sense any Mormonism.
The USA is a restricted or limited Democracy, "Majority rule with minority protections and whatever legislation lobbyists can buy with their first amendment freedom of speech through cash and whatever law enforcement can get away with in the name of national security and the war on (Fill in the Blank) including killing Americans on US Soil with drones.
Unfortunately, we now exist in a polarized era where the masses tend not believe in absolute truths, and that how we individually "feel" about something makes it TRUE or FALSE. We have entered an era of moral relativism and are on a race to moral bottom as evidenced by our media, the Internet (Reddit/4Chan), and our national priorities. Our society has devalued the worth of the individual and removed all respect from how we view our leaders. Following the logic presented by earlier posters, if we had to pick and choose our movies/media on the basis of the writes, actors, and producers morals, beliefs, and ethos I am sure we could always find something offensive. Many celebrities are whacko as evidenced by Cruise and Sheen. Echoing others, I am voting with my wallet and refuse to watch any more reality TV, watch any senseless drug/death/sex/shootem-up movies, and have stopped buying the FPS shoot-em-up video games.
Maybe you stand for whatever makes you happy. Maybe you want a culture that doesn't care about human life and further makes all women bitches and hoes. Maybe you think we should all carry guns and shoot idiots who drive too slow. Maybe you think what goes on over at Reddit and 4Chan is how a civil society should operate. Maybe "it's all ok bro" and we should all just do whatever we want with our unlimited freedom and exercise zero personal responsibility.
Perhaps the only way out of this maze is to stop having people tell us what we think and clearly define and examine our own personal moral codes and ethos then live them out. Perhaps everyone could devote a mere 5 minutes a day to meditation and reflection of their lives, believes, and actions. Written above the temple of Delphi in ancient Greece were the words "Know thyself." To me, it is refreshing to see someone like Orson Scott Card stand up for what they feel is an absolute truth, whether or not you agree with it. He truly knows himself and has demonstrated this repeatedly and consistently. I would ask all of you reading this, "What do you stand for? What kind of country/culture to you want to live in? What is your personal truth and what do you base it on?"
Lock incoming connections down by MAC address and disable your SSID. This will probably make them go away. Also, run WPA2+AES and pick a longish WIFI key.
If you have an ASUS Dark Knight router you can setup multiple SSIDs (guest networks) that disconnect every 60 seconds and name them "StopStealingMyWifi". This way you real SSID is hidden and your multiple guest networks are visible, but are unusable. You can also set hours of operations for your radios on the ASUS and turn off your radios at night and when you are not home. Lastly, if you are running dual band, turn off the 2.4 Ghz and run on the 5Ghz band. The 5Ghz signal travels poorly outside your home. WIFI is tough to secure with all of the WIFI hacking tools, but get a good router and rotate shield frequencies and should go away.
What technology will you build after answering them?
We have made quite a few novel technologies from exploiting the electromagnetic fields, but gravity eludes us. Imagine if we could use our electromagnetic technologies to play with gravity fields. We could generate gravity and build amazing trash compactors and possibly even fusion generators, in addition to a whole new realm of practical jokes. Just imagine the practical jokes you could play with a gravity field generator, Additionally, we could possibly generate gravity shielding to reduce the weight of cars, space launch vehicles, and if it could be made small enough, I could put it in the soles of my shoes.
I took the quantum class and would argue that we have the equations and understand how particles behave in their relativistic nature, but the best definition we can give for something like magnetism is, "it's a field", or "it's a virtual massless photon". Even the wave-particle duality of the electron is a mystery.
Do the magnetic or electromagnetic fields even exist or are they simply a property of space time? I think we have a pretty good handle on electric charge and physical properties, but truly understanding, not just describing phenomena like fields still seems out of our reach. And of course, the Grand Unified Field Theory still eludes us. Have we even found all the field phenomena? If it wasn't for some poor shepherd playing with rocks (lodestone) and identifying an edge case we might still not know about the magnetic field. Actually with the discovery of metals and acids we probably would have stumbled up on it.
I look at us as a collection of brilliant computer hackers. We can write code that exploits the system and create slick apps, but we are ignorant of the underlying architecture, circuitry, electronics and complex manufacturing processes that went into creating the device on which our apps do (theoretically) useful things.
And of course, the ultimate technologies would be force fields, warp drives, transporters, and photo torpedos.... right after the Holideck. I am not sure that lightsabers will ever be possible:)
Answer any of the following and you too can win a Nobel prize...
1. What is a magnetic field? 2. What is a electric field? 3. What is gravity? 4. Do tachyons exist? 5. Does the Higgs Boson exist? 6. Does matter decay? 7. Is a magnetic field really a field or is it just another property of space-time? 8. In how any dimensions does the Universe or multiverse exist? (The basic question of string theory) 9. Can magnetic and electric fields be quantized or are they continuous? 10. Can time and space be quantized or is it continuous? 11. Why can't we all just get along? 12. Is the universe a giant predetermined simulation playing out or do we have free will.
We are a species that just recently wandered in off the Sahara. We know a lot about a little. Our knowledge is like Swiss cheese, full of holes, gaps, and inconsistencies. There are things we observe but can't explain and things we can explain but can't observe. Go watch this video from Fenyman...
I concur, and am using the ASUS Dark Knight to cover the house and.5 acres built into a hill. The ASUS products might start off a little rough when they are just released, mostly buggy firmware, but ASUS does get it right and the hardware is solid. The ASUS never needs rebooting and takes daily streaming abuse. I bought my mother-in-law a $80 Belkin for Christmas and it needs resets every couple of weeks. Why didn't I just buy the $160 ASUS and save myself the hassle?
I am not down on the WRT54G, it just can't handle the traffic load in 2013. Even after loading DD-WRT, it and it still couldn't keep up with the incoming 30Mbps connection. I still have it as a backup, but it is not streaming capable.
A while ago I purchased an EZ-Watt meter so see how Much power that my system was consuming. I found that my system at max CPU and GPU load consumes about 350 W of power. So my question is why would I buy a green 800 Watt power supply when my system only needs 300 W? It seems that it would be best to match the power supply to the system in order to maximize savings since the efficiency of the power supply is calculated at its maximum rating. How much power doesn't 800 Watt power supply consume when the system is using only hundred to 200-300 W? It would be interesting to connect it to a wattmeter and find the answers. I suspect that a standard power supply matched to the system power requirements would result in a larger power/money savings then buying an oversized high-efficiency power supply.
With my 3-year old I started with the iPad instead of the PC. It has a much more natural touch interface and they can get going in minutes vs. struggling to figure out the archaic QWERTY keyboard and mouse/touchpad. As of August the iPad has 30,000+ educational titles and I would recommend Letter School for tracing letters, Doodle Buddy for drawing, Hungry Fish for math, Reading Rainbow for tons and tons of books, Screen Chomp for making basic screen casts, iMove for making videos and of course Amazon Instant Video for watching endless Mr. Rodgers. I also picked up the Ion Midi keyboard at the Target on closeout for $20 and the iPad is also a piano teacher.
I don't think there is too much toddler specific stuff in the Linux realm unless you plan to install Wine and runs Windows Apps. I am not sure if you trying to promote game addiction or learning, but the iPad is a great learning platform for young kids. Also, I would limit screen time to 15-minutes per day until they are about 5-years old. I believe that computers tend to limit a young childs imagination.
I apologize that I didn't answer you question directly but wanted to provide an alternate solution.:)
I agree, but Apple decided to partner with TOM TOM of all companies. These are the guys that drive people into lakes and down railroad tracks. Google put a ton of work into their maps product and API and sent their cute little Google mapping cars all over the world to get Streetview done. Apple should have just bought Garmin instead or just worked out a map revenue sharing deal with Google. It seems that our egos are what always get us in trouble.
IMHO Apple is on a very self destructive course with respect to Google. Google can do services on a scale that other companies can't even conceive and the backend is where the magic happens. Apple might have new shinier lights out data centers and Google products might have clunkier front ends but the backends (especially GMAIL, Google Docs, and Google Search) are untouchable. We see this everyweek as Apple mail and iTunes struggles to scale up. Hey everybody, don't forget, the next round of the Google Power Searching class starts tomorrow. Power Searching with Google Registration and the presenter at Google is confident enough in his company to use a MAC.
I am really late to the party here but I will give you my perspective. To get going in the world of Linux, try looking for an engineering company/college where you can be the junior admin and grow. Good Linux admins are classically trained. By this I mean then know DNS (inside and out), then can telnet to a port and see if a service is running, they understand databases and web-servers, they understand why a system is slow (is it disc I/O, swapping, CPU), they can program and know enough about system architecture to help keep developers from destroying systems and databases, and they generally understand voodoo networking like VLANS and SANS. It is a great field and if you like to learn and be involved in solving large, complex problems where computing actually supports research/engineering/medicine then it is the place to be.
I wouldn't recommend a small shop until you have had the chance to work with a larger community and worked with some of the wizards. After that you can specialize and seek a small to medium business if you like. So many IT people wildly theorize about problems and the root causes. Good Linux/Unix admins can usually pinpoint it with certainty. Good luck, have fun, you only get one life. Also, the Red Hat Certified Engineer program is very good.
If you beamed down with Captain Kirk and were on the "red team" wearing a "red shirt" it wasn't going to end well for you. I wonder if the same will be true at Google as they bring daylight into the dark corners of Google.
Yes, you are correct. It should be 20% and my source is the MMA. I gave a talk on this recently and I think I subconsciously typed the statistic for the number of manufacturing companies with less than 20 workes, which is around 60%, source MMA,
Good point, but consider that Ford's World HQ is still located in Dearborn, Michigan along with the Light Truck Engineering Group. When you buy from Ford you support both engineering, prototyping, and manufacturing jobs in the USA. You could buy other vehicles that are "assembled here" but the engineering is all done offshore.
America is still the #1 manufacturer of all globally produced goods. We manufacture 60% of all globally produced goods and China/Japan account for the majority of the balance. The difference is that the scale of manufacturing has shrunk from 10,000 person factories to small shops that employ under 50 people. The real issue I see is training. If you open the want ads you will see many, many worker wanted ads for machinists, CNC operators, lathe operators, CAD detailers etc.... The problem is that the small shops don't have training facilities or do apprenticeship programs or journeyman programs anymore.
While the US doesn't do large scale industrial widget manufacturing anymore, we still do lot's of manufacturing for the military, oil/gas industries, medical industry, auto and aerospace industry. Many companies are now pulling out of China as the cost benefit is vanishing as the Yuan has been allowed to float. These companies are creating automated assembly lines and pulling as much labor out as possible to produce goods here that are higher quality and at the same cost (or lower) as manufacturing in China. Additionally, companies are finding they can have much more agile supply chains and can cut lead times tremendously.
My advice to the 300 million people is find something that you like to do and get good at it. Competency is a rare commodity these days. And if you can't find something you love to do, then find a field and specialize in something that can't be outsourced, examples: pipe-fitter, welder, electrician, plumber, amazon warehouse picker robot repairer, physical therapist... and the list goes on.
Let me give you a brief list of the items in my home (purchased in the last 2-years that are Made in USA)
* Garage Doors
* Garbage Disposal (InSinkerator)
* Entry Doors
* Lumber to Construct Split Rail Fence
* Roofing Shingles
* Insulation (for Walls)
* Drywall
* Craftsman Tools (with lifetime breakage guarantee)
* Spatula (for cooking, yes I found one made in USA)
* Ford Mercury Mariner
* Step2 - Playground Equipment
* Open Sprinker Valve Controller
* Paint
* Various adhesive products
* Worktables
* Furniture
* Mattresses
* Toothpaste/Shampoo/Deodorant/BandAids
and the list goes on and on. While the USA is not producing electronics (which is really stupid for national security reasons) we still produce lots and lots of stuff.
That's because Bill Gates doesn't have an iPad 2/3 with iBooks, iTunesU, and 20,000+ educational apps.:) The iPad ecosystem supports Bill's vision of the flipped classroom and it works quite well and Bill has supported great apps like the Khan Academy. I have been in several flipped classes and they were fantastic. I dread going in an instructor led, painfully slow, "sage of the stage", blah, blah blah type of class. I want to move through learning at my own pace and really understand what I am doing and take topics that are of interest, like more computer science classes. Teachers just have to start using this model and Bill, if you are reading Slashdot, the best place to change all this is at the teacher factory, the Universities where teachers are trained. If teachers aren't trained to flip classroom and integrate technology into their curriculum, guess what, they won't.
Four months ago, I had no clue about iPads and thought, whatever, it's a fad, a picture frame I can touch and play games on but after digging and learning about the educational apps I am blown away. I am sure you could piece together a similar experience on a PC using a CMS (Content Management System), but it wouldn't be as efficient.
If you have a passion for learning and haven't tried iTunesU on the Ipad2/3 you own it to yourself to install the app and take it for a test drive. All the flipped/free education you could ever want. I am currently in CS193P at Stanford and 6-046J at MIT. I am learning at my own pace as my schedule permits. I wish I could just lock myself in a room and learn all day:) Thanks to these two courses, I am almost done with my first iPad app.
I agree the recording was horrible. However, it is a developer conference and you have to do something to spice it up since all of the cool people like "Eric Raymond" only speak at Open Source conferences. For me this just falls in the category of "whatever" and "bad taste" that it seemed like a good idea at the time. I will keep an eye out for the "official" meme T-shirt at the next conference I attend. On the plus side, this is the most attention Microsoft has gotten in awhile. MS has actually been doing some cool stuff lately like the "Microsoft Robotics Studio", but I haven't been able to get it to run on my Linux box or iPad.
Slashdot Mirror
AmiPro was better than Word. Wordperfect was best for experienced clerical staff and task Automation (macro programming).
I agree, the reason that MS won was the Microsoft Office Pro Package which bundled Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Viso, and Project. Once MS crushed the competition products began to slowly become "sold separately" as we see today with Viso and Project. I think a recent strategical error of Microsoft's was not releasing a version of Office for iOS, but it looks like they will try to play catch-up in 2014 with an iPad release. I truly believe that Balmer thought the iPad would fail to gain marketshare and mocked it.
Microsoft is in no immediate danger, but in my opinion they are overplaying their hand by trying too squeeze to tight. They need to adopt the Amazon model of giving more than the customer expects. Instead of charge more than the customer expects as in the case of their new licensing model.
Apple has also made a few blunders, the iPad is not a full laptop replacement (to protect the Air) and their cloud services are a disaster. If Apple gave the iPad the ability to replace a desktop and shored up the cloud backend, it could almost be checkmate. Meanwhile, Chrome books are gaining market share while both companies calculate their next moves.
It will be interesting to see this play out and I am particularly interested in the next XBOX and the "always on" Internet requirement.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/18944/bill-gates-frustrated-windows
I agree. I think my graphics card cost more than the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. :)
That sir, is funny.
I know there is a lot of speculation into the PC Sales dip, but let's face it, it is the same old song and dance in PC land. If I buy a new PC it has Windows 8 it comes loaded with crapware and doesn't do very much of what most people want to do. Tonight I went to Staples to browse and most of the Windows 8 machines were stuck on "Your protection expired XX days ago. Would you like to purchase Norton." AND I STILL CAN'T CREATE AND EDIT A VIDEO OUT OF THE BOX. However MS-Paint, Calculator, and Notepad are still hanging in from 1987, but to be fair, MS-Paint did get a facelift.
Flash forward to the iPad. I can give grandma an iPad with iMovie within 15 minutes she has first amazing video trailer of the grandkids on YouTube. Yes, I know the PC has robust suites like Adobe, Roxio, and Vegas but they aren't simple. Grandma has to figure out the Camera, take the SDHC card out, import the video, setup a project (hmm.... does grandma want DV-NTSC Standard-48Khz or DV-NTSC-Widescreen-48Khz, or maybe AVCHD-1080i(50i) Anamorphic) , import the video segments into timelines and on and on until she gives up. It is far too painful, just opening the door to the SDHC card can be a 15 minute project.
The problem with the PC is it hasn't gotten simpler. It hasn't gotten less painful to use, and grandma still can't get her video onto YouTube. One a daily basis on I use Linux, Windows 7, iPad, and MacOS/X. To me they have just become tools to get different jobs done. The clear winner for ease of use, efficiency, and convenience is the iPad tablet where I can get my video onto YouTube without crapware popping up telling me I need to update or am unprotected.
Oh and one more reason. SSDs. I can put an SSD in an old box, and suddenly, it becomes a vibrant fast box, even with all the crapware.
And MS, if you are listening. Put some useful WOW factor, polished software into your OS. Make the consumer feel like they really got something high value for their dollar or just keep doing what your doing. And if you keep on the same path, make sure you knee-cap the next XBOX with always on Internet required for play. Also, if you decided to launch a phone, make sure you abandon all your early adopters and ensure that the phone has no polished apps. Does anyone at MS still know how to code beyond rearranging the UI? Just asking.
The real question is should our government buy counterfeit military replacement parts from China?
Until we as a people decide that our national security depends on our manufacturing base and manufacturing capability then what difference does it make? It's all coming from China no matter how you look at it. The subcontractor of my subcontractor of my subcontractor is Chairman Mao. And when you play in a commodity market, the lowest bidding supplier with a stolen formula for capacitors wins as in the case of Dell.
Really? I have to tell you I am totally ignorant of the Book of Mormon, but I don't think that genetically engineering high IQ children to fight an Alien Assimilation of earth is in there, maybe I am wrong, but I am going to go with the wikipedia [[ citation needed ]] on your post. Perhaps you could share a few parallels and educate us all. It has been awhile since I read the book, but I didn't sense any Mormonism.
The USA is a restricted or limited Democracy, "Majority rule with minority protections and whatever legislation lobbyists can buy with their first amendment freedom of speech through cash and whatever law enforcement can get away with in the name of national security and the war on (Fill in the Blank) including killing Americans on US Soil with drones.
Unfortunately, we now exist in a polarized era where the masses tend not believe in absolute truths, and that how we individually "feel" about something makes it TRUE or FALSE. We have entered an era of moral relativism and are on a race to moral bottom as evidenced by our media, the Internet (Reddit/4Chan), and our national priorities. Our society has devalued the worth of the individual and removed all respect from how we view our leaders. Following the logic presented by earlier posters, if we had to pick and choose our movies/media on the basis of the writes, actors, and producers morals, beliefs, and ethos I am sure we could always find something offensive. Many celebrities are whacko as evidenced by Cruise and Sheen. Echoing others, I am voting with my wallet and refuse to watch any more reality TV, watch any senseless drug/death/sex/shootem-up movies, and have stopped buying the FPS shoot-em-up video games.
Maybe you stand for whatever makes you happy. Maybe you want a culture that doesn't care about human life and further makes all women bitches and hoes. Maybe you think we should all carry guns and shoot idiots who drive too slow. Maybe you think what goes on over at Reddit and 4Chan is how a civil society should operate. Maybe "it's all ok bro" and we should all just do whatever we want with our unlimited freedom and exercise zero personal responsibility.
Perhaps the only way out of this maze is to stop having people tell us what we think and clearly define and examine our own personal moral codes and ethos then live them out. Perhaps everyone could devote a mere 5 minutes a day to meditation and reflection of their lives, believes, and actions. Written above the temple of Delphi in ancient Greece were the words "Know thyself." To me, it is refreshing to see someone like Orson Scott Card stand up for what they feel is an absolute truth, whether or not you agree with it. He truly knows himself and has demonstrated this repeatedly and consistently. I would ask all of you reading this, "What do you stand for? What kind of country/culture to you want to live in? What is your personal truth and what do you base it on?"
Sorry to be downer tonight....
Lock incoming connections down by MAC address and disable your SSID. This will probably make them go away. Also, run WPA2+AES and pick a longish WIFI key.
If you have an ASUS Dark Knight router you can setup multiple SSIDs (guest networks) that disconnect every 60 seconds and name them "StopStealingMyWifi". This way you real SSID is hidden and your multiple guest networks are visible, but are unusable. You can also set hours of operations for your radios on the ASUS and turn off your radios at night and when you are not home. Lastly, if you are running dual band, turn off the 2.4 Ghz and run on the 5Ghz band. The 5Ghz signal travels poorly outside your home. WIFI is tough to secure with all of the WIFI hacking tools, but get a good router and rotate shield frequencies and should go away.
Lastly, here is an article on the subject.... this article disagrees with me on disabling your SSID and I am sure others will have an opinion....
http://www.wikihow.com/Secure-Your-Wireless-Home-Network
What technology will you build after answering them?
We have made quite a few novel technologies from exploiting the electromagnetic fields, but gravity eludes us. Imagine if we could use our electromagnetic technologies to play with gravity fields. We could generate gravity and build amazing trash compactors and possibly even fusion generators, in addition to a whole new realm of practical jokes. Just imagine the practical jokes you could play with a gravity field generator, Additionally, we could possibly generate gravity shielding to reduce the weight of cars, space launch vehicles, and if it could be made small enough, I could put it in the soles of my shoes.
I took the quantum class and would argue that we have the equations and understand how particles behave in their relativistic nature, but the best definition we can give for something like magnetism is, "it's a field", or "it's a virtual massless photon". Even the wave-particle duality of the electron is a mystery.
Do the magnetic or electromagnetic fields even exist or are they simply a property of space time? I think we have a pretty good handle on electric charge and physical properties, but truly understanding, not just describing phenomena like fields still seems out of our reach. And of course, the Grand Unified Field Theory still eludes us. Have we even found all the field phenomena? If it wasn't for some poor shepherd playing with rocks (lodestone) and identifying an edge case we might still not know about the magnetic field. Actually with the discovery of metals and acids we probably would have stumbled up on it.
I look at us as a collection of brilliant computer hackers. We can write code that exploits the system and create slick apps, but we are ignorant of the underlying architecture, circuitry, electronics and complex manufacturing processes that went into creating the device on which our apps do (theoretically) useful things.
And of course, the ultimate technologies would be force fields, warp drives, transporters, and photo torpedos.... right after the Holideck. I am not sure that lightsabers will ever be possible :)
Answer any of the following and you too can win a Nobel prize...
1. What is a magnetic field?
2. What is a electric field?
3. What is gravity?
4. Do tachyons exist?
5. Does the Higgs Boson exist?
6. Does matter decay?
7. Is a magnetic field really a field or is it just another property of space-time?
8. In how any dimensions does the Universe or multiverse exist? (The basic question of string theory)
9. Can magnetic and electric fields be quantized or are they continuous?
10. Can time and space be quantized or is it continuous?
11. Why can't we all just get along?
12. Is the universe a giant predetermined simulation playing out or do we have free will.
We are a species that just recently wandered in off the Sahara. We know a lot about a little. Our knowledge is like Swiss cheese, full of holes, gaps, and inconsistencies. There are things we observe but can't explain and things we can explain but can't observe. Go watch this video from Fenyman...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsgBtOVzHKI
Forget the UNO, Get an Arduino MEGA!
If you have a lawn irrigation system, consider this your first Arduino project! Open Sprinkler: http://rayshobby.net/?page_id=160
I concur, and am using the ASUS Dark Knight to cover the house and .5 acres built into a hill. The ASUS products might start off a little rough when they are just released, mostly buggy firmware, but ASUS does get it right and the hardware is solid. The ASUS never needs rebooting and takes daily streaming abuse. I bought my mother-in-law a $80 Belkin for Christmas and it needs resets every couple of weeks. Why didn't I just buy the $160 ASUS and save myself the hassle?
I am not down on the WRT54G, it just can't handle the traffic load in 2013. Even after loading DD-WRT, it and it still couldn't keep up with the incoming 30Mbps connection. I still have it as a backup, but it is not streaming capable.
A while ago I purchased an EZ-Watt meter so see how Much power that my system was consuming. I found that my system at max CPU and GPU load consumes about 350 W of power. So my question is why would I buy a green 800 Watt power supply when my system only needs 300 W? It seems that it would be best to match the power supply to the system in order to maximize savings since the efficiency of the power supply is calculated at its maximum rating. How much power doesn't 800 Watt power supply consume when the system is using only hundred to 200-300 W? It would be interesting to connect it to a wattmeter and find the answers. I suspect that a standard power supply matched to the system power requirements would result in a larger power/money savings then buying an oversized high-efficiency power supply.
With my 3-year old I started with the iPad instead of the PC. It has a much more natural touch interface and they can get going in minutes vs. struggling to figure out the archaic QWERTY keyboard and mouse/touchpad. As of August the iPad has 30,000+ educational titles and I would recommend Letter School for tracing letters, Doodle Buddy for drawing, Hungry Fish for math, Reading Rainbow for tons and tons of books, Screen Chomp for making basic screen casts, iMove for making videos and of course Amazon Instant Video for watching endless Mr. Rodgers. I also picked up the Ion Midi keyboard at the Target on closeout for $20 and the iPad is also a piano teacher.
:)
I don't think there is too much toddler specific stuff in the Linux realm unless you plan to install Wine and runs Windows Apps. I am not sure if you trying to promote game addiction or learning, but the iPad is a great learning platform for young kids. Also, I would limit screen time to 15-minutes per day until they are about 5-years old. I believe that computers tend to limit a young childs imagination.
I apologize that I didn't answer you question directly but wanted to provide an alternate solution.
I agree, but Apple decided to partner with TOM TOM of all companies. These are the guys that drive people into lakes and down railroad tracks. Google put a ton of work into their maps product and API and sent their cute little Google mapping cars all over the world to get Streetview done. Apple should have just bought Garmin instead or just worked out a map revenue sharing deal with Google. It seems that our egos are what always get us in trouble.
IMHO Apple is on a very self destructive course with respect to Google. Google can do services on a scale that other companies can't even conceive and the backend is where the magic happens. Apple might have new shinier lights out data centers and Google products might have clunkier front ends but the backends (especially GMAIL, Google Docs, and Google Search) are untouchable. We see this everyweek as Apple mail and iTunes struggles to scale up. Hey everybody, don't forget, the next round of the Google Power Searching class starts tomorrow. Power Searching with Google Registration and the presenter at Google is confident enough in his company to use a MAC.
I am really late to the party here but I will give you my perspective. To get going in the world of Linux, try looking for an engineering company/college where you can be the junior admin and grow. Good Linux admins are classically trained. By this I mean then know DNS (inside and out), then can telnet to a port and see if a service is running, they understand databases and web-servers, they understand why a system is slow (is it disc I/O, swapping, CPU), they can program and know enough about system architecture to help keep developers from destroying systems and databases, and they generally understand voodoo networking like VLANS and SANS. It is a great field and if you like to learn and be involved in solving large, complex problems where computing actually supports research/engineering/medicine then it is the place to be.
I wouldn't recommend a small shop until you have had the chance to work with a larger community and worked with some of the wizards. After that you can specialize and seek a small to medium business if you like. So many IT people wildly theorize about problems and the root causes. Good Linux/Unix admins can usually pinpoint it with certainty. Good luck, have fun, you only get one life. Also, the Red Hat Certified Engineer program is very good.
Windows 8 - Review http://www.pcgamesn.com/article/why-i-m-uninstalling-windows-8
If you beamed down with Captain Kirk and were on the "red team" wearing a "red shirt" it wasn't going to end well for you. I wonder if the same will be true at Google as they bring daylight into the dark corners of Google.
and I just made friends with the Ribbon interface and finally found everything again..... Why Microsoft? Why?
Yes, you are correct. It should be 20% and my source is the MMA. I gave a talk on this recently and I think I subconsciously typed the statistic for the number of manufacturing companies with less than 20 workes, which is around 60%, source MMA,
Good point, but consider that Ford's World HQ is still located in Dearborn, Michigan along with the Light Truck Engineering Group. When you buy from Ford you support both engineering, prototyping, and manufacturing jobs in the USA. You could buy other vehicles that are "assembled here" but the engineering is all done offshore.
America is still the #1 manufacturer of all globally produced goods. We manufacture 60% of all globally produced goods and China/Japan account for the majority of the balance. The difference is that the scale of manufacturing has shrunk from 10,000 person factories to small shops that employ under 50 people. The real issue I see is training. If you open the want ads you will see many, many worker wanted ads for machinists, CNC operators, lathe operators, CAD detailers etc .... The problem is that the small shops don't have training facilities or do apprenticeship programs or journeyman programs anymore.
While the US doesn't do large scale industrial widget manufacturing anymore, we still do lot's of manufacturing for the military, oil/gas industries, medical industry, auto and aerospace industry. Many companies are now pulling out of China as the cost benefit is vanishing as the Yuan has been allowed to float. These companies are creating automated assembly lines and pulling as much labor out as possible to produce goods here that are higher quality and at the same cost (or lower) as manufacturing in China. Additionally, companies are finding they can have much more agile supply chains and can cut lead times tremendously.
My advice to the 300 million people is find something that you like to do and get good at it. Competency is a rare commodity these days. And if you can't find something you love to do, then find a field and specialize in something that can't be outsourced, examples: pipe-fitter, welder, electrician, plumber, amazon warehouse picker robot repairer, physical therapist... and the list goes on.
Let me give you a brief list of the items in my home (purchased in the last 2-years that are Made in USA) * Garage Doors * Garbage Disposal (InSinkerator) * Entry Doors * Lumber to Construct Split Rail Fence * Roofing Shingles * Insulation (for Walls) * Drywall * Craftsman Tools (with lifetime breakage guarantee) * Spatula (for cooking, yes I found one made in USA) * Ford Mercury Mariner * Step2 - Playground Equipment * Open Sprinker Valve Controller * Paint * Various adhesive products * Worktables * Furniture * Mattresses * Toothpaste/Shampoo/Deodorant/BandAids and the list goes on and on. While the USA is not producing electronics (which is really stupid for national security reasons) we still produce lots and lots of stuff.
That's because Bill Gates doesn't have an iPad 2/3 with iBooks, iTunesU, and 20,000+ educational apps. :) The iPad ecosystem supports Bill's vision of the flipped classroom and it works quite well and Bill has supported great apps like the Khan Academy. I have been in several flipped classes and they were fantastic. I dread going in an instructor led, painfully slow, "sage of the stage", blah, blah blah type of class. I want to move through learning at my own pace and really understand what I am doing and take topics that are of interest, like more computer science classes. Teachers just have to start using this model and Bill, if you are reading Slashdot, the best place to change all this is at the teacher factory, the Universities where teachers are trained. If teachers aren't trained to flip classroom and integrate technology into their curriculum, guess what, they won't.
:) Thanks to these two courses, I am almost done with my first iPad app.
Four months ago, I had no clue about iPads and thought, whatever, it's a fad, a picture frame I can touch and play games on but after digging and learning about the educational apps I am blown away. I am sure you could piece together a similar experience on a PC using a CMS (Content Management System), but it wouldn't be as efficient.
If you have a passion for learning and haven't tried iTunesU on the Ipad2/3 you own it to yourself to install the app and take it for a test drive. All the flipped/free education you could ever want. I am currently in CS193P at Stanford and 6-046J at MIT. I am learning at my own pace as my schedule permits. I wish I could just lock myself in a room and learn all day
I agree the recording was horrible. However, it is a developer conference and you have to do something to spice it up since all of the cool people like "Eric Raymond" only speak at Open Source conferences. For me this just falls in the category of "whatever" and "bad taste" that it seemed like a good idea at the time. I will keep an eye out for the "official" meme T-shirt at the next conference I attend. On the plus side, this is the most attention Microsoft has gotten in awhile. MS has actually been doing some cool stuff lately like the "Microsoft Robotics Studio", but I haven't been able to get it to run on my Linux box or iPad.